Biodiversity Information Science and Standards :
Conference Abstract
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Corresponding author: Ben Norton (ben.norton@naturalsciences.org)
Received: 14 Sep 2021 | Published: 16 Sep 2021
© 2021 Ben Norton
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Citation:
Norton B (2021) APIs: A Common Interface for the Global Biodiversity Informatics Community. Biodiversity Information Science and Standards 5: e75267. https://doi.org/10.3897/biss.5.75267
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Web APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) facilitate the exchange of resources (data) between two functionally independent entities across a common programmatic interface. In more general terms, Web APIs can connect almost anything to the world wide web. Unlike traditional software, APIs are not compiled, installed, or run. Instead, data are read (or consumed in API speak) through a web-based transaction, where a client makes a request and a server responds. Web APIs can be loosely grouped into two categories within the scope of biodiversity informatics, based on purpose. First, Product APIs deliver data products to end-users. Examples include the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and iNaturalist APIs. Designed and built to solve specific problems, web-based Service APIs are the second type and the focus of this presentation (referred to as Service APIs). Their primary function is to provide on-demand support to existing programmatic processes. Examples of this type include Elasticsearch Suggester API and geolocation, a service that delivers geographic locations from spatial input (latitude and longitude coordinates) (
Many challenges lie ahead for biodiversity informatics and the sharing of global biodiversity data (e.g.,
Fundamentally, the value of any innovative technical solution can be measured by the extent of community adoption. In the context of Service APIs, adoption takes two primary forms:
To achieve this, Service APIs must be simple, easy to use, pragmatic, and designed with all major stakeholder groups in mind, including users, providers, aggregators, and architects (
Application Programming Interfaces, standardization
Ben Norton
TDWG 2021